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Origin and history of lake

lake(n.1)

"body of water surrounded by land and filling a depression or basin," early 12c., from Old French lack (12c., Modern French lac) and directly from Latin lacus "pond, pool, lake," also "basin, tank, reservoir" (related to lacuna "hole, pit").

This is reconstructed to be from PIE *laku- "body of water, lake, sea" (source also of Greek lakkos "pit, tank, pond," Old Church Slavonic loky "pool, puddle, cistern," Old Irish loch "lake, pond"). The common notion is "basin."

There was a Germanic branch from the PIE root, and it yielded Old Norse lögr "sea flood, water," Old English lacu "stream, pool, pond," lagu "sea flood, water, extent of the sea," leccan "to moisten" (see leak (v.)). In Middle English, lake, as a descendant of the Old English word, also could mean "stream; river gully; ditch; marsh; grave; pit of hell," and this might have influenced the form of the borrowed word.

also from early 12c.

lake(n.2)

"deep red coloring matter," 1610s, from French laque (15c., see lac), from which it was obtained.

also from 1610s

lake(v.)

"to play, sport," a dialectal and Northern English survival from Old English lacan (see lark (n.2)), and compare lek. Related: Laker "player, actor," laking-place (provincial) "ground where grouse or other birds gather for mating rituals."

Entries linking to lake

lac(n.)

red resinous substance (an incrustation deposited by females of an insect on twigs of certain trees in southern Asia), 1550s, perhaps immediately from French lacce, displacing or absorbing earlier English lacca (early 15c. in medical texts as a substance in making pills), from Medieval Latin lacca. All these are from Persian lak, from Hindi lakh (Prakrit lakkha), from Sanskrit laksha "red dye," which is of uncertain origin.

According to Klein and Century Dictionary, it means literally "one hundred thousand" and is a reference to the insects that gather in great numbers on the trees and create the resin. But other sources say lakh is perhaps an alteration of Sanskrit rakh, from an IE root word for "color, dye" [Watkins]. Still another guess is that Sanskrit laksha is related to English lax, lox "salmon," and the substance perhaps was so called from being somewhat the color of salmon [Barnhart].

Also see shellac (n.). Related: Lacic; lacinic.

lark(n.2)

"spree, frolic, merry adventure," 1811, slang, of uncertain origin. Possibly a shortening of skylark (1809), sailors' slang for "play rough in the rigging of a ship" (larks were proverbial for high-flying). Or perhaps it is an alteration of English dialectal or colloquial lake/laik "to play, frolic, make sport" (c. 1300, from Old Norse leika "to play," from PIE *leig- (3) "to leap") with unetymological -r- common in southern British dialect. The verb lake, considered characteristic of Northern English vocabulary, is the opposite of work but lacks the other meanings of play. As a verb, from 1813. Related: Larked; larking.